SINGAPORE, Sept 13: Singapore, the host of the World Bank, IMF annual meetings hopes the event to propel it up the league of global financial centres. The theme of the series of dialogues and seminars before the actual meeting has special Asian focus.
Some 16,000 officials and high-profile business leaders, including the heads of US and Chinese central banks and scores of economic leaders and chief executives, will descend on a country with little more than four million people. They will attend an array of meetings from around Sept 13-20.
Like Dubai and Prague before it, Singapore hopes that landing the world's biggest banking event will provide a springboard for further diversifying its economy, creating jobs and boosting growth.
"Singapore views this as an opportunity to showcase its financial sector, especially asset management," Ranil Salgado, IMF coordinating officer in Singapore, is reported to have said.
A mere 639 square kilometres in size, Singapore weight more economically than most Asian economies many times its size. In Asia, its foreign exchange market is second only to Tokyo, but its stock exchange is the eighth largest by market capitalisation. Its wealth management industry trails Hong Kong, and bankers complain the debt market is too small and lacks liquidity.
With its manufacturing sector under pressure as jobs move to cheaper, regional rivals such as China, it is trying to lure a wider range of companies to develop such areas as biotechnology, education and private banking.
According to the local press, Singapore was spending about S$135 million for the event, including budgets for everything from security to tea parties.
The arrangements from airport reception desk to hotels and from there to the Suntec Complex, the venue of most of the events are immaculate.
Several thousand Singaporeans are involved in the exercise guiding and facilitating participants from some 184 countries.Singapore expects to generate S$170 million in new business, a fraction of overall economic activity, although the real benefits could come longer term, analysts say.
Most attendants of the meetings belong to high-spending class but retailers at the commercial centres at Suntec do not seem to be very happy so far. "Our sales have actually declined over the last week as strict security arrangements and disruptions in the traffic flow has driven locals to opt for alternative options," Lee, a retailer at a readymade garment store, told Dawn.
A spokeswoman at Singapore's central bank said the top event would profile regional economies and capital markets and hopefully raise investor interest in Asian markets.
Apart from plans to expand its banking industry, Singapore wants to build two casinos and convention centres to lure both business people and tourists to take its cut of Asia's cash stockpiles generated from the region's trading surpluses.
"Asia is finally realising that along with generating the surplus, it has to figure out what to do with it because if it doesn't others will do it," a high-ranking Singaporean is reported to have said.